If you lose weight, stop smoking, and exercise, you can slow the aging process and make dramatic changes in your looks in a relatively short period of time.
If you want to look good, get plenty of rest, exercise, vegetables and quit worrying.
There’s certainly a link between good nutrition, a positive attitude and improved quality of life. People can have a say in what’s going on with their bodies by selecting a healthful diet.
Skin. Nowhere do the signs of aging manifest① themselves more clearly than in the condition of the skin. When your weight fluctuates②, the skin stretches with each up cycle, but it may not completely shrink back to its original size in the down cycle. As a result, the skin may sag.
A severely deficient diet can lead to skin disorders, dramatically affecting one’s appearance. By the same token, a well balanced diet with ample supplies of nutrients is thought by many experts to produce a glowing, younger look.
Zinc and vitamin A are important for normal, healthy skin. Zinc helps the skin repair itself, and vitamin A aids in keeping skin supple, preventing dryness and helping shed dead cells. Good sources of zinc are beef, eggs and seafood, while many dark green leafy vegetables are rich in beta carotene③, which the body converts to vitamin A. Other foods containing ample amounts of beta carotene include carrots, cantaloupe, winter squash, sweet potatoes, sweet red peppers, apricots and mangoes.
Vitamin C helps improve the blood supply to the skin and aids in forming collagen, the fibrous protein that lies beneath the skin’s surface and gives it a smooth appearance. Good sources of vitamin C include citrus fruits and juices, brussels sprouts, cauliflower, snow peas, red and green peppers, broccoli, white and sweet potatoes, tomatoes, watermelon, honeydew melon and cantaloupe④.
Greens are excellent sources of skin preserving nutrients and, generally, the darker the leaves, the more nutritious. Romaine lettuce, for example has about six times as much vitamin C and eight times as much beta carotene as iceberg lettuce.
How food is prepared matters too. The longer vegetables cook, the greater the loss of vitamins and texture. Don’t soak vegetables when washing them, since water soluble vitamins such as C will be lost.
Drinking six to eight glasses of water or other fluids each day to help keep skin and other tissues hydrated. That’s especially important for older people,who are at risk for dehydration because their thirst drives becomes blunted⑤ with age.” Coffee, colas and tea aren’t the best sources, since they contain caffeine, a diuretic that induces water loss.
Hair. Healthy, shining hair is second only to vibrant skin for making one look younger. Yet many people unwittingly mistreat their hair by eating an unbalanced diet.When diets don’t contain enough amino acids, the building blocks of protein, there’s a dramatic increase in hair loss as the body breaks down its own protein.
